NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
109 
At Machakos Road Station we had a shower which brought 
a toad out from its hiding-place, and I climbed through the 
carriage window and pursued it on the offside, but ineffectually. 
It hopped away in bounds creditable to an English frog, 
revealing a scarlet abdomen in so doing. I thought no true 
toads could leap. Took a striped hawk moth, cockroach, 
oil beetle, &c., at the light in the railway carriage. 
January 18, 1915. — I have most comfortable and delight- 
ful quarters at Nairobi in a bungalow some three miles from 
the Museum. My predecessor, sleeping in the same room 
last year, had a wild cat, probably a serval, jump in right on 
to his bed, which was beside the window that opens on to 
a verandah. A neighbour on rising from dinner had left a 
roast joint on the table, the window being open. The boy, 
coming to clear away, surprised a serval lunching off it on the 
sofa, where it had dragged the heavy joint from the table, 
leaving a greasy trail across the carpet. The cat, holding its 
capture, went straight through the window. 
I rose at daylight, about 5.80, and crossed the road to the 
Forest Reserve, some four hundred yards from the house. 
I had not penetrated very far into it when I heard the baboons 
crashing about in the trees. They make a tremendous row, 
and also utter a deep bass noise, half-bark, half-growl, which 
has, I believe, been likened to ‘ chacma.’ Altogether I saw 
some thirty of these beasts in an hour. If I remained still they 
would come close (fifty yards) and look down at me from 
their leafy retreats, but as soon as one moves, away they 
go, crashing and setting all the branches swaying. They are 
rather awe-inspiring beasts, nearly as big as a mastiff in some 
cases. With them was a Cercopithecus monkey with a broad 
white collar — I believe it is Syke’s monkey. There was 
another monkey of a smaller species in the trees. 
Came up under a tree in which there was a brown owl, 
probably the long-eared (Asio otis) which is found here. You 
will be interested in hearing that the English barn owl is 
also found here. Blundered badly in poking an apparently 
old nest out of a tree on the chance of finding vermin in it — 
a fresh egg, apparently a shrike’s, fell to the ground and broke. 
There are a lot of desert buzzards ( Buteo desertorum) 
